Research in the time of a pandemic: Coronavirus, Class and Mutual Aid in the UK
In this week’s blog we are joined by Dr Rhiannon Firth and Professor John Preston to discuss their upcoming book Coronavirus, Class and Mutual Aid in the UK, which provides an application of theoretical sociological frameworks on the classed nature of the UK response and suggests alternatives as to how this may be better and more fairly organised. We look at the current economic systems in place and the role those play in terms of how the pandemic has developed. Moreover, we discuss how class, race, gender, and other factors render specific groups structurally vulnerable to the worst effects of the virus.
In your upcoming book you reference the Spanish flu of 1918. What are the similarities and differences you see between this historic pandemic and what the world is currently experiencing?
JP: We are not historians, but there are some obvious differences in that they are not the same disease (Coronavirus is different to Influenza), we are only in the foothills of the Coronavirus pandemic, and one could point to changes in industry, technology and health care. The major similarity is that both pandemics took place in a predominantly capitalist world system. In the book I argue that there is a specificity about capitalism which is distinct from previous modes of production. Capitalism is concerned with profit though the exploitation of a specific commodity (labour power) from human workers and its own expansion. We are, though, at a different point in terms of the expansion of the ‘universe’ of capital than in 1918. States can not accept any alternative to the continuation of capitalist expansion. Despite this hegemony, capitalism is in crisis from its very beginning, and the Coronavirus pandemic occurs at a good time for capital in terms of restructuring, seeking new opportunities for profit and turning to the state as the ‘sovereign consumer’. At the same time capitalism is incredibly fragile in every moment and we describe a ‘multi-dimensional’ class war occurring at the level of the virus (in terms of property rights over biological entities and their extermination), the interests of the working class and the expansion of capital against human life and existence.
RF: From an anarchist perspective, we can see how both these pandemics are used in mainstream media and popular discourse to glorify both commodified modern medicine and the organisational powers of the repressive state apparatus. This appears to present a challenge to anarchists, while at the same time the failures of the status quo are all too apparent. Both pandemics have relied heavily on self-organised volunteers and individual and collective actions to prevent the spread of the disease, such as wearing masks, avoiding crowds, and respecting others’ space. While the state pays lip-service to enforcing these measures, it is simply not possible for the state to be everywhere. Therefore, both pandemics act as illustrations of Colin Ward’s principle of Anarchy in Action - the idea that people do not need a state or external co-ordination in order to organize their affairs, but rather they are better at doing them themselves. While there were some examples of people behaving dangerously during the pandemic, for example crowding onto beaches in Bournemouth and round market stalls in Hackney, these appear to be the exception rather than the rule, and might just as well be attributed to confusing public health messaging from the government alongside the dangers of an alienated and unequal society where generic public health decisions are made at a highly centralised level and applied universally to people and communities in all sorts of different situations. An anarchist perspective would not eschew social distancing or practices to protect the health of others, but decisions concerning them would be made through direct democratic processes by communities themselves.
What role do capitalism and the current systems in place play in the spread of COVID-19 as well as to how we have responded to it?
RF: This is an enormous question, and really you have to read the book for a comprehensive answer. In the book we cover how inequalities render some people more vulnerable to the disease than others, and how these same people are also more likely to be more vulnerable to the effects of economic crises caused by the disease. John covers how capitalist circuits of value and exchange lead to the emergence and rapid spread of diseases, whilst excluding some people from the goods they need to survive everyday life within capitalism, increasing their vulnerability to disease. We touch upon how the ways in which capitalists encourage humans to instrumentalise nature can give rise to pandemics. We consider processes of state securitisation and repression, privatisation and accumulation by disposession as typical disaster capitalist responses. We cover attempts to co-ordinate, co-opt and control radical social movement responses, including but not limited to mutual aid, as forms of ‘social capital.’ In the final chapter, I consider pandemic relief from the perspective of social movements mobilising mutual aid, and I look at the ways in which anarchist movements attempt to link their immanent/prefigurative practices in the here-and-now to a forward-looking radical structural critique of the linked roles of state and capital. I argue that in order to resist co-optation in a de-radicalised discourse of ‘social capital,’ social movements need to maintain radical intentionality at the level of desire and also engage in actions which seek to defend spaces of autonomy from disposession and the encroachments of capital such as rent strikes, commoning and degrowth.
JP: Time and space compression is an important element of capitalist dynamics. Commodities are produced as quickly as possible, bringing workers in close contact with each other, and encouraging mass travel and expanding supply chains. Capitalism is not a system which can stop or pause, begrudging even a few seconds. Workers, consumers and commodities are in constant contact with each other which provides an ideal basis for the spread of viruses. The response has been motivated by profit in terms of vaccines, masks and home deliveries. There are some specific ways in which the pandemic response has been managed. Viruses can be considered as ‘forces of nature’ which enable some elements of capitalist production such as working from home technologies and the pharmaceutical industries as part of ‘disaster capitalism’. We also see the use of the ‘repressive state apparatus’ in terms of increased emergency, police and army powers.